LSA IT Monthly Status Report - August 2015

Happy August! These updates cover news from LSA IT, as well as the broader Michigan IT community that's here to serve your IT needs. Feel free to forward to others who may be interested. Feedback and questions are always welcome.

Fall rush extended support hours — Starting Monday, August 31st, the LSA IT Service Desk will offer extended support hours to assist with fall rush. The LSA IT Main Service Desk will be available for email, phone and walk in support Monday through Thursday starting at 7am until 7pm and on Fridays from 7am until 5pm. Extended hours will be available through Friday, September 24th. (Contact: Lisa Callihan)

Canvas migration funding for faculty — LSA ISS has funding for LSA faculty interested moving their course sites from CTools to Canvas. LSA ISS will provide funds for a graduate student or undergraduate student to work with a faculty member on their migration. (Contact: Monika Dressler)

Campus WiFi upgrade — The Campus-wide WiFi Upgrade Project has kicked off with a bang! The multi-phased approach for this project is different than a traditional upgrade. To minimize disruption, many large classrooms in high priority buildings are being upgraded over the summer, with full building upgrades to be completed at a later date. For a complete list of the buildings included in these projects, visit the WiFi Upgrade project. (Contact: Marissa Green)

Need scientific computer programming help or assistance? — LSA IT's Advocacy and Research Support (ARS) group can assist you with programming projects big and small. We specialize in a wide range of tasks including data analysis, experimental control, and instrument automation. Our language expertise is largely in MATLAB, LabVIEW, and C/C++, and we can provide help for a variety of others. Visit the LSA Services Portal for additional details. (Contact: lsait-ars@umich.edu)

HPC 470: Parallel Programming workshop — Registration is now open for a five-day workshop held August 10th-14th, covering parallel programming in various languages. These languages include: MATLAB, R, Python, C, and Fortran, using both MPI and Open MP models on CPU, Xeon Phi, and CUDA architectures. Most of the workshop will be spent in designing, running, debugging, and analyzing the performance of code. This workshop consists of ten sessions; sign up for the sessions that interest you. Please see the course web page for more information and to register. (Contact: Charles Antonelli)

Google Drive now available in CTools — CTools' Google Drive integration is an easy way to share Google Drive folders, documents, and other Google items with all members of a CTools site. It automatically accesses the roster of students or the participant list in your site. Instructions for adding Google Drive to your CTools site. (Contact: 4HELP@umich.edu)

Interested in GraphPad Prism software? — LSA IT is currently gauging interest in GraphPad Prism software. We are collecting info on potential use and device count to help inform license/price negotiations with the vendor. If you would like to use this software, please complete this survey. Thank you for your help. (Contact: Dan St. Pierre)

ITS Announces new storage service: MiStorage — ITS has transformed its Mainstream and Value Storage solutions into the new MiStorage service. This new service combines and streamlines ITS' previous data storage options. LSA IT will help you select the lowest cost, fastest, and most reliable storage solution for your specific needs. Please refer to the Michigan IT Services Portal for pricing and look under the Getting Started tab for additional information. (Contact: lsait-service-desk@umich.edu)

MiStorage outage notifications — IT staff can now opt-in to receive email notifications for any MiStorage system disruptions or service changes by joining the respective groups in MCommunity. The two groups that are typically used for MiStorage communications are MiStorage NFS Silver and MiStorage CIFS Silver. (Contact: 4HELP@umich.edu)

Google Apps Learning Center — Google has updated the Google Apps Learning Center interface for a much nicer experience. At the Learning Center you can find information about the Google Apps available to you with tips, answers to common questions, and more. (Contact: 4HELP@umich.edu)

New and updated software available — Since the previous update, UmichITAM has released the following upgrades to the software catalog: ChemOffice Pro 15 for Win and ChemDraw Pro 15 for Mac. Renewed SID files are now available to extend JMP and SAS client licenses for another year. The following contracts were renewed: SAS, PyMOL, and PCTeX. Complete list of all titles. (Contact: Crystal Borgman)

LSA IT Service Desk Scorecard — July monthly support ticket statistics are included below. (Contact: Lisa Callihan)